1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to dispensers and more specifically to a dispenser for handling multiple rolls of flexible sheet material such as paper toweling to be dispensed in succession.
2. The Prior Art
Dispensers for rolls of flexible sheet material such as paper toweling have been known in the prior art for sometime. Indeed, dispensers holding a multiple of such flexible material rolls have been known where at least one reserve roll is held in a non-dispensing position while sheet material from an initial roll is being dispensed to the user. These multiple roll dispensers include mechanism to move the reserve roll into a dispensing position when the initial roll of material is depleted.
The flexible sheet material may be led from the dispenser to be supplied to the user by a number of different means usually incorporating at least a pair of rolls between which the sheet material passes. The sheet material may be manually withdrawn by the user and manually torn off against a serrated cutting blade mounted near the sheet outlet of the dispenser, a manually operated crank may drive the rolls to feed out the sheet material to be cut off by being drawn against such a serrated blade, the dispenser may have a rotatably mounted knife within the dispenser cooperating with a slot in a rotatable roller adjacent the knife for the sheet material to be severed or perforated to be more easily torn off. Many dispensers for flexible sheet material include means to measure a desired length of the web dispensed to the user to control the length of web, such as paper toweling, dispensed on each operation of the dispenser.
Aside from whatever type of mechanism may be employed in guiding the web of sheet material from the roll and out of the dispenser, in multiple roll dispensers a problem is encountered in effectively and reliably getting the leading end of sheet material on the reserve roll to feed into the dispensing mechanism when the reserve roll moves into its dispensing position, after depletion of the initial roll, and the reserve roll's sheet material is to be fed from the dispenser to the user. The solution to this problem has been approached in a number of different ways. Many have been found ineffective to assure that the sheet material on the reserve roll is reliably picked-up by the dispensing mechanism so that the web of material is made available on the exterior of the dispenser to the user. The prior art dispensers have gone to rather complicated and expensive structures to get the leading end of sheet material on a reserve roll into the dispensing mechanism thus, aside from the expense of their manufacture, also contributing to more costly maintenance and a tendency to fail or breakdown.